For four years in a row – 2022 to 2025 – we had fully booked Honeyguide groups in the Picos de Europa with the Pau Lucio - Chris Durdin double-act as guides. This year, 7 – 14 June 2026, Pau is returning to the Picos de Europa, and we have room for more in the group. We can add a second guide if there is lots of additional interest, though it won’t be me (Chris) as I was keen to return to the French Pyrenees in June.
Honeyguide leader Pau Lucio serves 'Picos scrumpy' at a café. (Photo from this collection: Honeyguide Facebook 2023.)
I
thought I should write some notes about why our Picos de Europa holiday appeals
to me: why I’ve been happy to return several times, as have several
Honeyguiders. I think our Picos
de Europa web page explains the area’s delights pretty well, though a blog
gives an opportunity to explain it in a different way.Hotel Tierra de la Reina, also popular with bikers.
Boca de Huérgano, a great place to stay. The Hotel Tierra de la Reina and Boca de Huérgano make a very good base. There are walks for pre-breakfast birdwatching in every direction, with plenty to see. Black redstarts are common and there is a white stork nest just around the corner (and others nearby). Rock sparrows are reliable in Boca de Huérgano – a bird that can be difficult to find elsewhere. There are usually common redstarts nesting in a village garden.
Juvenile rock sparrow, unusually in a tree, Boca de Huérgano (PL, June 2025).
A
walk to the old Roman Bridge is a familiar routine, and we always see dippers
on the river.Roman bridge in Boca de Huérgano, with dipper (David Bennett).
Elena and her team at the Hotel Tierra de la Reina are very welcoming and we always enjoy the typically Spanish food. Explaining the choices is something that Pau does with great patience. This includes the near-daily explanation every year, on the subject of puddings (postres), that flan in Spain is like a crème caramel …
There are midwife toads in Boca de Huérgano, calling by the hotel and elsewhere. We always hear them, and sometimes we get lucky and see one.
Midwife toad near the hotel.
A compact itinerary. The Picos de Europa is huge, and an area where too much travelling could be a risk. This holiday is very much Pau’s Picos: it’s an area of the western Picos that he’s been to many times and knows well. Pau also takes family holidays here, which speaks volumes, and he was keen to return with another Honeyguide group this year. One site has my favourite fern: moonwort.
Moonwort, which grows near this mountain pool.
Cafés and picnic places. Our pre-picnic routine (as on other Spanish holidays, especially) is a café in a small town, and very nice they are too.
Bar in Valdeón: an impressive backdrop here, and there is a very good cheese shop nearby.
There are several conveniently located picnic spots, rural in character with good wildlife around us, where we eat the hotel’s generous picnics.
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| One of our regular picnic places. |
Fuente Dé. Our one longer trip is to Fuente Dé, where we take a cable car as a practical way to see the landscape and wildlife of the high tops. It’s a bit of a journey and involves a queue to ascend in a cable car, which may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s done for good reason. There is always a consensus in our groups that the alpine experience makes it a very memorable day.
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| Group at Fuente Dé, June 2025. |
The flowers are lovely: compact, low-growing species like gentians and alpine toadflax. Alpine choughs are guaranteed and most years we find snowfinches, wallcreeper (that may take a little patience), bearded vulture and alpine accentor. At some stage we expect to find chamois, often a family party on a snow patch.
Fuente Dé alpine flowers collage. Check the IDs on Honeyguide Facebook 2025.
Wonderful butterflies. We saw 59 species of butterflies in 2025, 62 in 2024 … you get the picture. Yet the list varies every year, and we keep adding to the master checklist: for example, there were some early species in 2025, which was weather related. Choosing what butterflies to illustrate in this blog is tricky, hence the collage.
Butterfly collage, June 2023. IDs here in our Honeyguide Facebook 2024 collection.
More information about the Picos de Europa via the Picos de Europa web page, from where there are links to sets of photos and holiday reports.
Chris
Durdin
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